(Well, I may not have that “plush corner office”, as I have a little cubicle at work … but … whatever …)

No one has ever figured me completely out. Hell, I haven’t figured me completely out, so I don’t know why someone else might. I come from an interesting mix of heritage, but that’s what makes me uniquely “American”. Everyone has a different and unique heritage, and, at least in the past, this was an ok thing to have. I hope in the current socio-economic climate, it stays that way.

I was born in the middle of the American Baby Boom generation in the suburbs of Los Angeles. We moved all over the country, as my father was a corporate transferee, but essentially I was raised a suburban kid, with most of my time being in California. I was schooled in the public schools back when they were good, and I graduated in 4 years from the University of California at Davis with 2 majors (International Relations with an emphasis on Political Science and Spanish). I was aimed at the fast track into the corporate world or government analysis. (I’ve done both, by the way, which is only in the “for what it’s worth” category, as it certainly didn’t get me fame and fortune.)

“She grew up in the city in a little subdivision.

Her daddy wore a tie. Mama never fried a chicken.

Ballet, straight A’s, most likely to succeed …

After graduation, they sent her … for some higher education,

Put her on the fast track to a law degree.

Now she’s coming home to visit …

And she’s ridin in the middle of his pick-up truck,

Blarin’ Charlie Daniels, yellin’ ‘TURN IT UP’.

They raised her up a lady

But there’s one thing they couldn’t avoid.

Ladies love country boys …”

TRACE ADKINS

My suburban upbringing however does not define who I am at all. I can’t really say that I *ever* felt like I “belonged” in the ‘burbs … and particularly not Southern California (although I do like my Beach Boys and Beatles, like most Baby Boomers). I credit Roy for helping pull more of who I am out of me. I was in the corporate world and the government service world, wearing my power suits, and rising through the ranks.

“She’s gone country.

Look at them boots.

She’s gone country,

Back to her roots.

She’s gone country,

A new kind of suit.

She’s gone country.

Here she comes …”

ALAN JACKSON

My father was born in eastern Colorado and raised in western Kansas before coming to California in the middle of the Great Depression, during the Dust Bowl years with his divorced mother (my paternal grandmother) and a younger sister. {Read The Grapes of Wrath , and you’ll understand a bit better at least this part of my heritage.} His father was a Kansas wheat farmer and a salt of the earth type of man (that’s the part of my family that came from a group of 7 brothers thrown out of Ireland in the 1600s and sent to “The New World” because they “didn’t fit in” … which seems to be a pattern in my life …). Anyway, my father did not have an easy early life, but after enlisting in the Navy during World War 2 and then putting himself through the University of Southern California (USC) on the GI Bill in the late 1940s, he met and married my mother, a 2nd generation Southern California girl. My mama however was not and is still not what Hollywood and the rest of the world considers a “California Girl”. She’s descended from Big Gramma (see my prior posts) and, in the 40s, also went to USC and graduated with her degree, which was very rare for then. She was a teacher while I grew up and later worked at Sears Roebuck & Co (back when that was a large retail giant), retiring as a store manager.

“I ain’t never had a problem with California.

There’s a lot of good women from Sacramento to Corona,

But them Hollywood types after a while wear on ya,

Struttin’ around in their size zero’s,

Skinny little girls, no meat on their bones,

Never even heard of George Jones!

Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls?

Ain’t you glad there’s still a few of us left

That know how to rock your world,

Ain’t afraid to eat fried chicken and dirty dance to Merle?

Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls? …

GRETCHEN WILSON

Well, anyway, my mama probably *can* wear a size zero (she’s a little bitty thing and feistier than most everyone put together and I love her dearly) and she’d *NEVER* dirty dance to Merle (*I*, on the other hand, would … in a heartbeat …) … but she sure isn’t afraid to eat fried chicken … THAT is for sure!

Anyway, again, I digress (see other posts … I may digress, but sooner or later, I’ll circle back to my topic at hand).

All of this background, however, has made me an interesting combination of personalities as a 3rd generation California girl and a Grapes of Wrath Dust Bowl descendant … among other things. Maybe that’s why I like where I live so much now, in Northern California in the Gold Country / Mother Lode. I live out in the sticks, up a dirt road, in the hills. I’d like to think I’m a country girl but I’ve got “city” and “suburbs” mixed in … and I work on Capitol Mall, 2 blocks from the State Capitol Building in Sacramento as a government analyst.

Hypocrite. Racist. Intolerant. Selfish. It’s really funny to us how these words are bantered about these days. Quite honestly, Roy and I are sick and tired of it. The name-calling is what continues to enforce it. If we don’t tacitly agree with the opinions of the “sheeple” of this world at all turns, we get called names and then get told we’re “hypocrites” for not wanting to be around the people involved. We guess we’re supposed to take personal attacks but not supposed to defend ourselves against them. We’re supposed to just take it and smile.

Well, guess what? Neither of us does that well.

Here’s our overall viewpoint. People have differing opinions. That’s ok. We’re all individuals, and we’re all entitled, at least for the time being, to having those differing opinions (unless BO, the USA’s self-anointed “Dictator-in-Cheat”, chooses to limit that freedom also like he’s so intent on doing to everything else we hold near and dear). We however refuse to embody the “sheeple mentality” like people keep trying to force on us.

We’ll put it this way: we don’t agree with anything Barack Obama believes in. We don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s black, white, purple, or green with orange polka dots. We don’t vote or make decisions based on color, ethnicity, or socio-economic background. We vote and make decisions based on the individual’s beliefs and choices. So this is what we have to say here: WE DO NOT AGREE WITH BARACK OBAMA’S SOCIALIST/MARXIST AGENDA. PERIOD!!!!!!

Additionally, we don’t know about others, but we at least don’t want to be around people who like to start name-calling like little kids do when they get mad that someone might not agree with them … like toddlers who stomp their feet and yell “Meanie!” when they don’t get their way.

If the “sheeple” have a different opinion than us, that’s fine. Just do not try to force it our way. We don’t play that game.

Anyway, it boils down to this: the name-calling has to stop. It only further fractures a populace that is already fractured to the breaking point. Be respectful of differing opinions. Allow “true” discussion. Listen. Ponder. Make informed decisions. Don’t make ultimatums or “take a hard line” like BO likes to do. Everyone has valid points to offer and that need to be heard, acknowledged, and discussed. We’re willing to listen to the other side if they are willing to hear and accept ours.

The name-calling has to stop. It demeans the person doing it more than anyone else.

In the 5 years since we got married, we’ve been through hell and back, sometimes ready to strangle each other but always having each other’s back. We decided that we really needed to celebrate this year … our 5th/10th anniversary.

🙂

Ok, so, we had margaritas and Mexican food last night for our anniversary. Tonight we’re celebrating our anniversary still and opened a yummy bottle of champagne given to us when we got married in 2007. Considering all of the … excuse the word used but it’s the only one even *vaguely* appropriate here … BULLSHIT that we’ve encountered and handled in the past years we’ve known each other, we decided we *deserved* it.

So. Hmm.

Like I’ve said before, we do not believe in coincidences. Period. Nope. Never. Not happenin’.

We opened the bottle. We popped the top. We toasted. The following song started on Roy’s DJ program:

“I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Along with the sunshine, there’s gotta be a little rain sometime.” Lynn Anderson

OH MY GOD. We both laughed til we cried. It is so appropriate that I can’t even describe it.

Well, ok, yes, I can, & over time, I will.

When we met, we both said close to the same thing about ourselves which was pretty much … you get what you get around either one of us and each of our lives is like a rollercoaster. The past many years have been pretty much a rollercoaster beyond belief, but we both knew that the other was there *no matter what* … even when we were yelling at each other (who? us? yell? noooo …… not us …..)

Like we said, no one thought we’d last. There was no reason why we should have. Everything was against us.

However, 5 & 10 years later, we are stronger than ever. We know we have someone who will *always* have our back … truly “through thick and thin”.

So … I’ll end with this, which is the way it is with us. Just ask Kara.

🙂

“We’re like summer and winter. We’re not one bit alike. We’re like satin and cinders. I’m definitely not your type. Well, then, what are we doin’ in love? What are we doin’ in a mess like this? What are we doin’ in love? Why were you someone I couldn’t resist? What are we doin’ in love? We’re like paper and matches. We’ll probably have our share of fights. We’re like roses and switches. It’s gonna be hard, but we’ve got to try. So what are we doin’ in love? What are we doin’ in a mess like this? What are we doin’ in love and what are we gonna tell all our friends? You don’t have to like someone to love someone. That rule was made to be broken. But, if we have to say goodbye to a life we’ve gotten used to, what are we doin’ in love then? We’re like sun-up and sun-down. People say we’re never going to last, like uptown and downtown. You like it slow but I like it fast. What are we doin’ in love? What are we doin’ in a mess like this? What are we doin’ in love? What are we gonna tell all our friends? What are we doin’ in love? What are we doin’ in a mess like this? What are we doin’ in love? You were just someone I couldn’t resist. So that’s what we’re doin’ in love.” *WHAT ARE WE DOIN’ IN LOVE*, Kenny Rogers & Dottie West

Relationships can be tenuous, particularly to those people that are older or that have been previously divorced (as have been Roy and I both). It’s hard to trust and/or love again.

We met online, as was mentioned in an original post, but not in the way most people would think. It was not in a chat room or a dating site. It was like a wrong number, where Roy tried to email a friend near Boston, Massachusetts, from his home near Portland, Maine, and got a wrong email address and emailed me near San Francisco, California. We became online friends, then face-to-face friends, then lovers, then husband & wife.

It started exactly 10 years ago yesterday with the first email. We got married exactly 5 years later on that same date. So yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary and 10th “since we met” anniversary.

People thought it’d never last. They thought we would never survive 6 months, let alone 5 & 10 years.

We’ve been through some great times and some incredibly rough times together, times that most people would have never survived alone, let alone a fairly new 2nd marriage for us both (since we both swore we’d never get married again after our first marriages).

Yet here we are, our 5th anniversary being yesterday, stronger and tighter together than ever. We’ve proved them all wrong (including ourselves).

I’ve written a couple of things regarding my “Big Gramma” and her recipes. This one is for her *awesome* potato rolls. I make them for special times usually, but they can be any time, particularly if you like to make yeast breads and whenever you have leftover mashed potatoes. This recipe is again unique though, due to the history behind it.

Like I said, my Big Gramma was a strong-willed individual, very good at surviving whatever obstacle was put in her path. This recipe was built out of survival and used in the Great Depression and World War II, when people truly knew how to survive and didn’t expect or want free government handouts, because they wanted to make it *on their own* without intervention by the government (like I was raised to do). It was when milk, butter, eggs, and sugar were a rare commodity, so they learned to stretch what little they did get into good hearty filling foods.

I generally make this recipe into rolls but I’ve done it into a loaf of bread also and it works well. If you want it to look “fancy”, make it into “cloverleaf” (my favorite: see picture above) or “Parker House” styles. It’s a hearty but airy bread or roll with a *lot* of flavor and can be made the day you eat it or several days in advance and frozen or refrigerated or kept in a bread box for later use. My kids love them and pigged out on them when little.

So … here you go … trying to measure as best I can, since I make them by “eyeballing” it (as I was taught to do when learning to cook).

🙂

It’s not a real sensitive/exact recipe … but don’t substitute the types of ingredients, or it’ll not work right.

-boil potatoes
-reserve water when potatoes are soft enough to mash
-mash potatoes to eat but keep out 1 c of mashed potatoes for this recipe (the rest can be used in your regular meal)
-dissolve yeast in the water that the potatoes were boiled in when it is lukewarm
-lightly whisk together all ingredients except flour
-add about 5 cups of flour till stiff enough to knead
-knead till smooth and elastic
-let rise til double
-punch down
-make into rolls or loaf as desired
-let rise till double
-bake at 325 about 12 – 15 minutes for rolls